The Roku 3 Makes Apple TV Look Like a Lame Attempt

Roku has always been good, but the latest iteration of its streaming media player really does blow Apple TV away.

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- You don't hear much about Roku, but the private Saratoga, Calif., company has quietly sold around 5 million streaming media players. In a January 2013 blog post, Roku claims it unloaded one Roku player every second on Black Friday 2012 with Q4 same-store sales up 40% year-over-year.

Over at Business Insider, Steve Kovach writes a glowing review of the new Roku 3, arguing that it "blows away the Apple ( AAPL) TV." Couldn't agree more. In fact, both my old Roku (the basic model LT) and the Roku 3 I received last week make Apple TV look like a half-assed attempt at a streaming player.

Here's an example of where Apple runs into trouble by putting out hardware that's a clear attempt to lock users into its ecosystem.

It ends up with a subpar streaming player that, as Kovach indicates, you should only buy if you have tons of iTunes video content. I say video because with the Roku iPhone app, you can actually play your iTunes music library and view photos through your Roku. I haven't quite figured out how to make it work yet, but I think you can also stream video from devices such as laptops and tablets via a USB connection.

For instance, Intel Media VP/GM Erik Huggers claims he wants to address personalization by user across one household Netflix ( NFLX) account. Worthy task. Roku hasn't done that yet -- it might be more a developer issue at Netflix than anything else -- but it did take care of one of my biggest annoyances.

On the Roku 3, you can search for movies and television shows by title, name or by actor or director. The results display the streaming services that license what you're looking for, prices -- in standard and HD quality -- and available seasons/episodes on each.

So, this past weekend when I wondered about the availability of season three of Louie, I searched the Roku 3, got instant results, discovered no Netflix availability and made a choice between Amazon.com ( AMZN) Prime Instant Video and Wal-Mart's ( WMT) Vudu. (I went with Vudu just to try it out. I was pleasantly surprised. Well-done interface that's actually better than both NFLX and AMZN at first look).